The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Jackson Boxer

For London-based chef and restaurateur Jackson Boxer, food is very much a family affair. His grandmother, Lady Arabella Boxer, is a celebrated cookbook writer whose iconic recipe tomes became kitchen bibles to a generation of home entertainers, and continue to inspire to this day (her Book of English Food was recently reprinted on account of popular demand). Boxer’s father, Charlie, runs the South London deli Italo, whose diminutive size belies the pivotal role it plays as a central hub—and source of excellent Italian groceries—for the local community. And his brother, Frank, owns the red-hot London bar of the same name, where perfect Negronis and panoramic views are enjoyed from a car park rooftop in Peckham. So far, so illustrious.

At just 28, Boxer is already making his own, indelible mark on the rapidly evolving food culture in London. At his restaurant Brunswick House Café—located in a converted antiques warehouse in the off-piste neighborhood of Vauxhall—Boxer serves what he describes as “very British, very simple, very confident” dishes made using fresh produce from the nearby New Covent Garden Market and local meat suppliers. The Guardian didn’t mince words when it called Brunswick House “perfect.”

[Fergus Henderson’s] credo is just taking the best ingredients and cooking them very simply so that everything comes together and speaks for itself. It’s a marvelous principle on which to base a menu.

Meanwhile, in the East London hipster mecca of Dalston, Boxer oversees Rita’s Bar and Dining alongside Gabriel Pryce, Deano Jo, and Missy Flynn—originally a temporary venture above a nightclub, it’s now seeking a permanent home due to popular demand. Rita’s Southern-style menu of fried chicken and Key lime pie might not feel quite as quintessentially British as Brunswick House’s Lancashire pudding and red cabbage, but Boxer’s commitment to fresh, quality ingredients carries through. “I’ve always been puzzled why London, which seems to have more fried chicken shops than any other type of fast food, does it so badly,” he explains. “I felt that we could make a much better product using happy, free-range chickens, as well as playing around with modernist techniques like brining.”

It’s an ethos that hints at the education he’s received from some of Britain’s most influential culinary figures. Brought up by parents who “were great cooks and great entertainers,” Boxer’s moment of epiphany came at the age of 16, when he got a job as potwasher-slash-babysitter for Margot Henderson. The celebrated chef-owner of Shoreditch restaurant Rochelle Canteen also happens to be the wife of St John’s Fergus Henderson, the man whom Boxer cites as his greatest inspiration: “[Henderson’s] credo is just taking the best ingredients and cooking them very simply so that everything comes together and speaks for itself. It’s a marvelous principle on which to base a menu.”

Henderson’s influence also extends to Boxer’s front-of-house approach. In his own restaurants, he aims to recreate the sense of wonder that he experienced on his first visit to St John at the tender age of 12. “I remember thinking it was the most glamorous place I’d ever been. Everything was so considered; starched tablecloths and beautiful cutlery. And there was just this buzz of a full restaurant, of lots of people having very fun conversations, but feeling very well looked after.”

Creating buzz is something Boxer does well. As one of the pioneers of London’s flourishing DIY dining scene (he prefers not to be affiliated with the ‘pop-up’ trend, observing that “the term has been so co-opted”), Boxer clearly has a second sense for what people want to eat—and how they want to eat it. At his next project, Palazzo Peckham, he’ll be cooking out of a temporary kitchen once again: this time in a disused boat yard in Venice, as part of an art project for the Biennale. In characteristic fashion, Boxer plans to serve food that reflects his London heritage in an unexpected way: “The menu is inspired by Peckham street food—jerk chicken, African barbecue… The stuff we’d eat on our lunch break when we were first opening Frank’s. Venice is so international, so we want to give the menu a sense of place; of where we’re from.”

Here, Boxer tells us all about where he’s from—and how he developed his love affair with modern British cookery—as he breaks down the 10 dishes that have influenced his career so far.

1. Roast bone marrow and parsley salad at St John

St John was my first grown-up restaurant, where I fell in love. Almost everything I adore about restaurants is distilled in it—its unshowy confident glamor, the happy chatter of full tables, the whoosh of white-jacketed staff gliding about—and in this dish, with its dark brown savory aroma of sweet wobbly fat, preceding the arrival of the monumental plate and attendant lobster pick. I always remember watching my mother eat toast as a child, by spreading a small nub of butter onto a corner, spooning over some of my granny’s damson jam, delicately eating, and repeating, mouthful by mouthful. I thought this was the most chic thing, composing each mouthful so thoughtfully, and bone marrow and parsley salad is particularly appropriate for this delightful endeavor. On my first visit to St John when I was 12 or so, I ordered chitlings in a rush of bravado. They proved beyond me, so my father very kindly traded his bones for my guts. I’ve never traded back.

2. Forerib of beef at 32 Great Queen Street

By 16, I was working odd jobs for the great Margot Henderson, and when I left university she got me a more permanent job with her friends at the newly opened Great Queen Street. I hadn’t eaten a whole lot of beef growing up—my mother’s anxieties about intensive farming and BSE informing our family diet somewhat—and certainly never any of serious provenance and age. All the Hereford beef at GQS came from a young farmer in the Welsh borders called Tom Jones, who’d arrive once a week with a whole cow in a fairly complete state. It was one of my first jobs in the kitchen to butcher it, under close guidance from the inspirational Tom Norrington-Davies. The rib section would often be allowed to age quite a bit longer. I remember so vividly the first time I ate it, in all its glorious dark, sweet, vegetal complexity, rich with Welsh mountain grass and crusted in salty char. It’s been the beef to which I compare all others since.

3. Warm snail and bacon salad at The Anchor & Hope

At the same time as I was cutting teeth at Great Queen Street, my brother was tending bar at the Anchor & Hope, our big sister south of the river. In the kitchen there was the man who’s cooked some of the greatest things I’ve ever eaten, Mr. Jonathan Jones. There’s something magical that happens to the things Jonathan cooks. They make you shiver a little with excitement, as if he imbues them with some elemental charge. This dish I really like: lardons of the best smoked Alsatian bacon are rendered down in a skillet, with a weave of red onions (weave is a term I particularly associate with Jonathan, and one of my favorites), some snails and croutons, a splash of the best vinegar, and tossed up with oak leaf and frisee. It’s warm and crisp and light and heavy and so perfectly rounded in flavor and texture—quite the best salad I know.

4. Smoked eel sandwich at Quo Vadis

Jeremy Lee is one of my favorite cooks, and also one of my very favorite people—a great friend and companion, full of wisdom in all things. There’s something wonderfully right and proper about all he makes, using just about the best of everything, and always with an aesthetic of abundant generosity coupled with artfully measured restraint (though this restraint happily deserts him when carousing). This sandwich is a perfect example of that: the warm smoky oil of eel, the horseradish, so fresh and lively, and those sweet pickled red onions. I never employ inhaling as synonymous with eating, except when wolfing down several of these ethereal beauties at Quo Vadis, my home from home.

5. Macaroni cheese (my grandma, Arabella)

When I was turning thirteen my parents asked how I wanted to celebrate what they generously considered my maturity. All I wanted was a dinner cooked by my grandmother, in her beautifully ordered flat—a place I have always, since I first used to go with my brother to stay as small children, associated with everything being right with the world. She thought and thought what elaborate dish to cook, and eventually settled on a nursery favorite, macaroni cheese. It was, certainly, the platonic ideal of a macaroni cheese, with a complex blend of nutty cheeses and firm noodles hiding slices of slow roasted Italian tomatoes. It seemed such a clever synthesis of childhood and adulthood, and so perfectly executed, with such thought and care, that I’ll never forget it, nor all the other wonderful things I learned from her, and still do.

6. Quails, lentils, and chicory (my mother, Kate)

The greatest entertainer and provider I know, my mother lives and breathes for everyone, and has the most generous spirit of anyone I’ve ever encountered. Copious quails are dressed in fat and fried hard in the largest skillet on which one can lay hands, then clattered into a medium oven to finish. Meanwhile, a great bowl of warm silky puy lentils are dressed with curly parsley from her garden, and a salad of crisp chicory with a mustard vinaigrette. Feeds 4 to 50. A lot of my favorite memories from childhood involved helping her in these Herculean feats, and the pleasure I’ve learnt from her in feeding other people is what got me into this game in the first place.

7. Elizabeth David’s chocolate cake (my dad, Charlie)

When I was in my late teens I was often broke, as was my dad. I was writing, as was he. The greatest solution to these two intractable problems was discovered in the Bonnington Café, a community vegetarian café in London’s most beautiful enclave of squatters, skaters, and characters: Bonnington Square, SW8. On the occasion that one of the regular operators would take a holiday, we’d rise at dawn to scavenge for deals at New Covent Garden Market, then spend the day cooking enormous minestrones, dahls, and ribollitas. A somewhat erratic cook at this stage, my attempts at vegetarian cuisine were pretty hit and miss, though they were greeted with huge encouragement from my father, who’d always make this excellent dark chocolate cake of Elizabeth David’s for pudding. Whatever disaster I’d caused for the first two courses, my dad’s cake—served with whipped cream—would salvage. A good lesson I think.

8. Raw beef rib, oyster, and chickweed by the Young Turks

I didn’t know James Lowe or Isaac McHale particularly well when I went to their dinner at Nuno Mendez’s Loft Project, so I always feel I made friends with their food before I made friends with them. This plate, one of the most memorable I’ve ever been served—so clever, so pretty, so honest—is nothing like either of them. Which is a very good thing—I could never be friends with anyone so perfect.

9. Grouse at Hedone

For one of my favorite meals ever I took my brother, on the occasion of his 25th birthday, to Hedone, one of my favorite restaurants. The peak of this, one of the happiest meals of my life, came halfway through a bottle of excellent Côte-Rôtie, as Mikael came over with our grouse, served as a leg with claw and plumage intact, the breast, and smoked potatoes dressed in a sauce made of the little bird’s offal. I owe my brother untold amounts, not least for giving me a best friend and collaborator with whom to elevate such moments of transcendence still higher.

10. Grilled calves kidneys and chips at Chez George (Paris, France)

Sitting at one of Chez George’s small tables, this plate of plump squeaky kidneys before me, across the table from Melissa, my beautiful girlfriend, and beside a bottle of very decent wine, is when I felt most in love, a state from which I’m happily still giddy, ever to remain so. Perhaps less about the food this one, but an inspirational dish nonetheless. [It represents] the sort of timeless moment I’m so much looking to forward sharing with our baby daughter when we first take her to Paris.

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